And When Hope is Gone
by A Heart On Fire
Summary: Just a small story based on what I imagined D'Anna's state of mind to be after she chose to stay behind on Earth.


_Look at this,_ D'Anna thought in disgust, _this is what war does to people. _She looked over the horizon off of the hilltop she was standing on. What she saw made her feel slightly sickened. She saw nothing but destruction. Complete and total destruction. Dust, dirt, and the ruins of places that she had no trouble believing were once beautiful.

She walked slowly down the hilltop, without checking her surroundings. And why should she? There was nothing here to fear. Absolutly nothing. Nothing at all. Not a single soul within millions of miles from her.

It had been several hours since the fleet had jumped away, never for her to see again. But that didn't bother her in the slightest. As she had said before to Saul Tigh, she would rather die here in the resting place of her ancestors than leave and kill again. Or be killed.

That thought made her smirk. Being killed was the least of her worries now. She had heard that one could live for as long as a week with no food, but only for a few days without water. But dying did not scare her. She had died several times before, only this time she knew that it would be permanent. Still, it had to happen eventually. Not that she was in any kind of a hurry. No, that wasn't it at all. She had all the time in the world right now.

Her thoughts turned briefly to the people she had left behind. None of her fellow cylon "friends" had come to try to convince her to go with them. _Not that I would have listened, but it would have been a nice gesture. _She sighed. _It's so quiet out here, I don't think I have ever heard so much silence. _Even being alone on a basestar wasn't quite as quiet as it was now. There was always the typical backround sound of the basestar, the sound of centurions walking around, the sound of the Cavil models trying to boss everyone else around. Constant noise. But here, there was silence. Pure, deafening silence.

She was all alone. Just her and her thoughts. And she tried to ingore those. Her thoughts did not help her to enjoy the time she had left. All they did was silently condemn her. They told her that she was weak for giving up, for being a quitter. She quickly tried to shake off those unwanted thoughts, but they came anyway.

_Why did I stay here? I am only going to die. I am the only Number Three in existence, what right did I have to end the life of an entire line?! ... But what does that matter? There is no hope in existence any more. _This thought made her even more depressed. _Soon enough Admiral Adama will understand that. That there will be no new home, only light-years and light-years of endless space. They are only buying time before Cavil catches up to them anyway. There is no hope left in the universe. It was all wasted on a dream. A dream called Earth._

_Earth, _she sighed, _that was my hope. A place where we could start all over, break the cycle. A place of new possibilities_. D'Anna's personal hope was that the humans on Earth, with no knowledge of cylons, would be more open to a trusting relationship between the races. No more prejudice, no more barriers. Cylons and humans could live in peace, together. Finally.

At first she had not believed in the human's pursuit of the thirteenth colony. She had viewed it as a pointless mission, a futile effort from a dying species. Then slowly, she saw the reasoning in their hope. Not in Earth, that belief came later, but in the reasoning of the people's reactions. She saw that once the people had something to believe in, they began to work together. Not perfectly, but then again, no one is perfect. The hope of a future transformed them from the disorganized mess that they had been after the initial attack, into one fleet, focused, more or less, on a single goal.

It had been from that change in the humans that D'Anna had understood hope. Soon after, she had begun to truly research into the God that her people worshiped. She had found a purpose for herself in the universe, and for the first time in forever, everything had been going right. And then she had a new curiosity concerning the "Final Five". To discover their identities was a mission that had also brought her a lot of hope. Hope that had only increased once she had solved that mystery. Her life had recently been so full of hope. Until now.

_Hope,_ she thought,_ the only thing we can do is hope. And when hope is gone, then what can we do?_ It was only then that D'Anna fully understood why she had felt compelled to stay behind, it was because she no longer had any hope. And she did not know what to do from there. _If hope is the only thing I can do, I need something to have hope in._

For the longest time she had been travelling along the empty road. She had hardly noticed when the ground beneath her changed. It now felt like a solid floor, almost as if it had formerly been made of concrete. She looked up and saw a small house that looked more or less undamaged. Her curiosity got the better of her and she decided to venture inside.

The door creaked as it opened; it sounded nothing like the warm, cozy atmostsphere that the interior displayed. There was an old table to her left and a reclining chair covered in blankets to her right. Moving towards the recliner, D'Anna was grateful for this small respite from the dark, empty world outside. Once she was sitting and relaxing, she reflected back to her former thoughts. She wondered what God had in store for her now, wondered if all there was left now was to die here on this bombed-out, wasteland planet. Wondered if there was anything to hope in now.

Glancing around the room she was in, her eyes rested upon an old, dusty book on the table. She stood up to get a better look at it. Holy Bible, it's cover read. She walked over and picked it up. She took it back to her spot on the armchair. Looking over the book's many pages, she felt compelled to read it. As if something, (or Someone), was telling her to read it. _Well, it's not like I have anything better to do_, she thought as she reclined back into the chair.

She began to read... And there was new hope.


End file.
